Horrible beauty and (un)easy submission: Melodrama and the gothic in Calvary
Citation
Stewart, M. (2017) Horrible beauty and (un)easy submission: Melodrama and the gothic in Calvary. Studies in European Cinema, 16 (2), pp. 108-125.
Abstract
This article examines Calvary (2014) as a gothic and melodramatic text
- as an expression, more specifically, of pathetic melodrama and the
Anglo-Irish gothic. As a pathetic melodrama, Calvary presents us with
an apparently impassable situation, at the level of both the diegetic
narrative and the historical present. It also exhibits considerable
suffering and pathos. These melodramatic features are articulated via
affect in familiar ways, so that the film reproduces the moral occult
and a regressive nationalism. The article argues, though, that Calvary's
excesses are best understood as specific expressions of pathological
melodrama, the bog gothic and the Cartesian gothic. In this respect,
it is argued that Calvary's ostensive - dense and allusive - dialogue
is a form of speaking suffering - a dark, but potentially productive
game. All of Calvary's affective excesses, it is argued, are critical entities
- ghostly witnesses, explosions and violent collisions of mind and
body, which nonetheless cohere around particular histories, places
and events. However much, then, Calvary may seem to accede to
melodramatic redemption or gothic clich, it is better understood, it
is argued, as a form of submission - a necessary giving in and facing
up to historical trauma and shame.